The present invention relates to a two-phase meat product and to a process for preparing such a two-phase meat product.
High quality meat has a relatively high content of muscle tissue, low fat content or fat which is easily removed, and connective tissue or gristle of such a kind or in such a proportion, that this meat can be cooked by simple methods to give highly desirable products with a tender and juicy texture. Many qualities and/or cuts of meat, however, contain connective tissue of such a kind or in such a proportion that the meat is tough to eat, unless the connective tissue is suitably tenderized, or wholly or partly removed prior to processing.
It has, therefore, been proposed to convert the cheaper meat with its associated fat and connective tissue by so-called reassembling and reforming techniques into meat products which do not exhibit the poor eating characteristics associated with the cheaper, low quality meat. In these processes generally the natural structure of the meat is extensively damaged by finely comminuting the meat or flaking it with conventional equipment and the comminute produced can be restructured into products which, on cooking, are much more palatable and tender than the original meat when cooked. However, such products lack the natural appearance of meat and, moreover, their eating characteristics are very often significantly different from natural meat.
Up till now it has always been thought that the fibrous nature of meat upon consumption had to be attributed to the muscle fibres present, hence the suggestion to incorporate fibrous or other relatively hard materials, such as vegetable protein fibres, cooked meat shreds or other meat connective tissue into reassembled meat.
Previous attempts to simulate the texture and succulence of good cuts of natural meat have led to products with an acceptable texture, but insufficient succulence, or vice versa, in other words, the one quality was reached only at the cost of the other. In extensive experiments a meat product has now been developed, exhibiting the proper balance between a good texture and a good succulence. This meat product is obtained by providing two phases, viz. one phase, consisting of meat slices, imparting the correct texture and a second phase imparting sufficient succulence, the final product exhibiting a parallel alignment of its constituent phases.
With regard to the texture imparting phase, it has now been found that fibrosity does not relate to fibres solely, but that the texture impression during the eating of meat is significantly influenced by the macrostructure of the meat, in particular by the alignment of structural elements. In order to produce a reassembled, reformed or restructured meat product which upon consumption closely resembles natural meat, it has been found necessary to provide a product with a structure having internal, preferential planes of weakness. This product upon chewing (consumption) breaks down in a defined temporal way and according to a pattern, which gives rise to a strong, meat-like impression, producing structural elements of size and shape comparable to tertiary bundles of muscle fibres. The meat product according to the present invention hence should exhibit "built-in" orderly planes of weakness in order to arrive at a certain temporal sequence of breakdown, which derives from the preferential fracture of the meat along these planes of weakness. This sequential breakdown will initially produce a small number of larger particles (at least the size of tertiary bundles) and subsequently a larger number of anisotropic smaller particles.
With regard to the succulence imparting phase, the function of this phase in the final product is to reduce the losses of juices during cooking and to provide their release during consumption. This function is realized by providing as the succulence imparting phase a finely dispersed phase, comprising fat, water and a binding agent, which preferably is a proteinaceous binding agent.